


I Lie With the Wolves Alone

by cognomen



Category: Skyfall (2012) - Fandom
Genre: M/M, Torture, dubcon, insertion, mindfuckery
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2012-11-24
Updated: 2013-03-13
Packaged: 2017-11-19 10:23:15
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 4
Words: 9,782
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/572241
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cognomen/pseuds/cognomen
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He draws up beside James with his hands in his pockets and his attention out over the island. Silva displays one hand without looking at Bond, the tiny silver device in the half-flattened curl of his fingers, and he asks, thumbing the switch thoughtfully without activating it:</p><p>	"How long until they find us, Mr. Bond?"</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

He draws up beside James with his hands in his pockets and his attention out over the island. Silva displays one hand without looking at Bond, the tiny silver device in the half-flattened curl of his fingers, and he asks, thumbing the switch thoughtfully without activating it:

"How long until they find us, Mr. Bond?"

James does not know what his move here should be - he wants to lunge for the device in impatience, to activate it in the hopes that the brief time it would be on would be enough, but that was a desperate move and he should not reveal just exactly how desperate he is to this man.

"I never activated it," James admits, watching the device disappear into Silva's pocket again.

Silva flicks a glance at him without turning his head, lowered eyelids expressing the direction of his thoughts in an economy of motion - we will see. James knew he would not lower his guard without time for some patience, but what time they wasted here they were well away from M.

"It is unlike you to waste an opportunity," Silva says, and makes a noise in his throat like half the notes of a tune. Bond cannot quite recognize it..

"Perhaps you've convinced me that this is my opportunity," James says, trying to follow the direction of Silva's gaze, but he does not know the island so well as its master. He assumes the man is looking at the downed statue where they had left what remained of Sévérine. 

Silva makes a sound, a hum. Disapproval. He shakes his head and looks at Bond from the corners of his eyes. "I think not. Not yet."

-

James does not see Silva again for some hours, left to wander the compound - the computers do not welcome him and would not respond to threats, and he does not challenge the blockade of bodies that occasionally arise to bar his way and keep him from venturing too far. 

A number of grim-faced subordinates, and enough to do the job without it being insulting - come to re-attach Bond firmly to a chair. They tie him tight at his arms, at his elbows again, his ankles, his middle as if he might try to buck free. It's excessive, it puts James on his guard - more so than the assault rifles turned warningly in his direction, more so than any of Silva's implied threats.

Silva appears some minutes later, wearing a sober expression and carrying a slim metal tool. James has seen the like - on his last visit to the dentist. It's like a simple, blunt pair of pliers with a bent tip. It's the simplest of tools that endure, James thinks. He'd wondered when things were going to start down this road, and this was disappointingly predictable.

His captor takes in the upward tilt of James' chin, and arches his eyebrows, stopping just shy of James' personal space before he settles down on his haunches so that James does not have to crane his neck looking up at him.

Silva is silent for a long moment, head tilted downward in apology. 

"This is the only time I will ever hurt you," Silva promises, looking Bond in the eyes and extending his hand with the tool held in it to trace idle patterns against the side of James' knee. James is not reassured, but he has endured worse torture than the thought of losing his winning smile. Silva's gesture is overt, and James exhales a sigh, preparatory to holding his breath - he will not make this any easier.

Silva stands briefly before he settles, crouched, over James' lap. He is heavy and solid - he has not succumbed to a life of leisure without MI6 and the threat of looming tests. James is momentarily shamed, recalling his own shape after just months away in recuperation. 

Silva takes a demonstrative deep breath, making eye contact in a commanding way. The motion transfers through his seat on Bond's lap, and James finds himself mirroring it before he can stop himself. He delays his exhale stubbornly, to throw them off rhythm, and Silva's chuckle almost breaks the tension.

Until strong fingers apply themselves to the hinges of James' jaw, and he clenches it shut in a sudden flurry of resistance, until with a patient expression like a parent doing their best to make a difficult thing easy, Silva curls his fingers into the pressure points below the curve of James' jaw. His fingers are broad, solid, and _adept_ at finding their target.

The gasp unclenches James' teeth and without regard for his fingers, Silva slides his thumb between James' teeth all the way into the crease of his jaw, locking the rest of his fingers behind the hinge of it, just underneath James' ear and exerting a warning pressure. He does not need to vocalize his threat of dislocation - it is perfectly clear.

He waits until Bond's breathing has become regular again - through James' twitching, jerking attempts to dislodge Silva's balance. Silva simply shushes him lowly, soothingly, all the while letting the weight of the forceps rest overtly against James' thigh with the handle curled in Silva's other hand. There is no resisting the strength in the hand curled so tightly into and around the side of his mouth.

When Bond has resigned himself, when the tool feels familiar enough that his mind has accepted what's about to happen as an inevitability he needs to prepare for instead of something he can fight, Silva lifts it at last.

"I am giving you something I did not have," Silva says, his tone a soothing distraction as the metal clicks lightly over James' front teeth, then slides beyond - a molar first, so as not to ruin James' looks. Considerate, James thinks, until Silva continues and James realizes which tooth he is arrowing in on. The far left molar, in the back.

"A present - so that there is no false alternative in your mind. No stubborn hope - and no choice to burn yourself, Mr. Bond-"

James cannot answer for his open mouth, but he pushes his tongue against the forceps, along the side of Silva's thumb accidentally, to try and dislodge them. Silva has a grip on the tooth already, low, careful. He does not exert so much pressure as to accidentally crush it, but rocks the tool from side to side to lever it free with an unrelenting pressure. The tooth is long dead, a hollow porceline replacement, so that there is little pain but the persistent tug of fingers behind his jaw and pressure. 

The tooth pulls free, only weakly rooted to the metal post that held it, and Silva draws it free to examine it, turning it over in the light. He displays the crown - intact - for James to see.

"There, now."

There is only a little blood swelling against the back of James' tongue. It is only his gums - pinched and torn, but hardly the worst pain he has ever felt.

Silva presses a wad of cotton against the bleeding gap in James' mouth and then turns his thumb at last, letting go and allowing James to close his mouth to hold the cotton in place as he slides his thumb free along the inside of James' cheek. His skin is rough in James' mouth, and James feels his expression darken. 

Silva displays the crown in his open palm - white and whole, tinged barely with saliva diluted blood, and lifts himself out of James' lap. 

"Nothing ever changes," he says, stepping back and then back again. He stops outside the doorway of the cell that Bond suspects he will be spending some time in, and inverts his hand. The tooth falls to the floor with a faint click against the cement, and Silva crushes it under the sole of his shoe, grinding all of it to a powder indiscernible from the white, lethal contents within.

He scatters them wide with his shoe, looking down at his work as if it were important, as if it were the most satisfying part of what he did.

"Why?" James asks, his mouth thick with cotton, his jaw sore.

Silva only laughs - a hurried sound, before his expression sobers, going apologetic. He tips his chin down, lets his eyes fall half closed as if he were deeply weary, and says only, "You will understand."  
-


	2. Chapter 2

Bond contemplates the exchange when, the next day they come to untie him from the chair. He has slept a little, but he feels stiff when they uncoil him. The chair had grown uncomfortable, pressing hard on him in places, rubbing pressure points. 

There area five, and they are trained for him. They respect what he is capable of, and he knows his chance won't come unless he can lull them off their guards, and so he lays passive, observant, while they stretch him to his full length on the floor.

When they truss his arms from his wrists to his elbows in stiff canvas, and then an intricate series of ties - the knots are by his elbows, out of reach of his talented fingers - he expects they are going somewhere. Then they bind his ankles together, with a wide swath of canvas to keep his circulation from pinching off, and James supposes they aren't going anywhere for a while, then. 

This done, three of the men remain - one of them sitting on James' shoulders, and the compression and pull on his injuries forces him to quiet his mind pointedly. He misses part of the process, but the idea forms in his mind when a chain rattles to the floor, a hinge squeaks faintly.

There is a pulley up there somewhere from which a chain has been suspended. The process afterwards is merciless but well practiced. The chain is attached to the bindings on his arms, and then they pull - not sharply, not suddenly, but steadily and undeniably on the other end.

He struggles to get his knees under himself as his weight is pulled upward, but it hardly matters - his arms rotate as far a they will go at the shoulder and then his voice is tearing helplessly out of him as they lift further, forcing his arms to bear his whole weight as they suspend him.

Every shift he feels acutely, all of his weight heavy on his hyper-extended joints. The injured shoulder immediately begins to tremble ominously. James pulls in air, forces himself to do it slowly through his teeth. His feet are just inches from the floor, but he feels as if he's hanging miles in the air. James knows the term, the position - he knows it's chosen to force his body into a submissive curl, to cause agony.

He knows that Silva chose it to exploit the weakness that James had almost believed he'd conquered when he'd 'passed' his tests at MI6. Silva had considered his options logically, and then selected this particular punishment specifically. He believed in a personal touch. James watches the henchmen disappear and he knows that this must only be the beginning, that Silva will soon appear - that they are about to test their wills.

He underestimates Silva's patience. Nothing appears, no one comes. There is just James and his slowly worsening agony - and the sharpness fades a little as his muscles stretch, as the warnings fail to be heeded that his body is not meant to do this, but the ache underneath grows. He stays as still as possible, but it starts low and grows, grows - threatens to overwhelm, and still no one appears to ask him questions, no one to make him promises of relief.

James has been trained to resist torture, to hold England's secrets dearer than his own flesh, but there is no distraction. The shaking of his weak shoulder grows violent, threatens to dislocate his arm at the highest point. Helplessly, James thinks of the advice of how he was taught to endure, and his mind remembers Tennyson of all things. 

When he was young, before attaining his 00 status, they had told him to memorize a song or a poem. He had never expected to need it, but had dutifully memorized - he had ironically and bitterly chosen.

_Sunset and evening star-  
And one clear call for me!_

The poem runs end to end in his mind, as meaningless as counts of a hundred, but it allows him to maintain his focus, to keep from screaming or groaning, when he works the words soundlessly with his mouth. He allows only air to slip between his lips and no one appears. 

When Silva finally does come, James' poetry has become a frantic meter to block his thoughts from wandering to the cold absence of sensation in his hands. The sudden light breaks the beat of words like waves against the shore, and James startles, almost pulls his shoulder free with the motion but he bites the sound silent behind his teeth. 

Silva tsks and then makes a surprised sound; soft and worried.

"How brave you are, Mr. Bond," he says softly, and he steps forward, extends his hand and broadcasts his intent so that James isn't surprised Silva presses the tips of his fingers into James' shoulder, bracing him. At first the pain is sharper, but - different, at least, as Silva's fingers unerringly seek the scars the bullets had left. 

"To endure in silence," Silva continues, and presses the whole flat of his palm to James' shoulder and lifts, takes some of the weight off and James clenches his teeth, closes his eyes and after a moment even the slight lessening of pain feels like the greatest gift he has ever been given. 

"I do worry about your hands," Silva says, and stops bracing James slowly, carefully taking his support away and the pain floods back.

Then James is being lowered - carefully, slowly and mindful of his arms. His knees almost refuse to take his weight, even when he manages to get his feet under him. Silva does not have to be wary of attack, the bright agony of muscles too long out of place keeps Bond occupied until Silva is untying him. As Silva undoes the knots holding his arms the numb nonexistence in his hands flares to stabbing needles of sensation. When his vision stops being a whitened wreck of pain, when awareness returns, his hands are being rubbed back to life between both of Silva's - 

"Oh, nothing permanent," he sighs, as James' fingers jerk out of his grip. The motion had been gentle, but rough enough to wake his circulation. The purpled fingers begin slowly regain color. James resists the urge to shake them, or hold them protectively close; he does not want to show vulnerability to a wolf.

But Silva has already turned away, he is already giving Bond his space, and he turns the chair James had been sitting in yesterday around and sits in it. "I'm afraid I won't be offering you anything to eat or drink today, but soon, Mr. Bond. You have my word."

James does not answer, tipping his head back. He feels strangely defiant, and he is waiting for the questions, for the offers to come. But Silva sits still and silent, and watches James intently, and he asks for nothing.

-

When he goes, the men return, and _this_ time Bond fights them with everything he has. It gains him a reprieve of sorts - instead of hanging him with his arms locked behind his back, instead when they can finally get him bound - sans canvas padding, so the ropes pinch tight on his wrists and numb his hands quickly - they hang him his full length and pull him higher off the floor.

It takes ten of them to do it, however, and Bond feels the victory savagely, primly - he had not simply sat and waited. When they open his back with the whip, he pulls his lower lip between his teeth, stares straight ahead, and remembers his Tennyson. 

_And may there be no moaning of the bar,  
When I put out to sea_

_But such a tide as moving seems asleep  
Too full for sound and foam,_

It avails him through the sharp whistles and active pain of the leather cutting his skin, and the tightening knot around his wrists, but when they leave him alone with cooling skin and he ceases to sweat after a time from dehydration, he loses the words and his will under the throb and slow drip of blood down his lower back. It is not the worst he's endured, but it is slow and patient after the immediacy, and that's almost worse.

After a time Silva appears with water, and James says nothing while Silva tuts over the very wounds he'd ordered. James does not lower his guard, and does not flinch away from the fingers that touch his back while he is bound, but he does not refuse the water Silva brings with him. He tries, but his mouth is so dry and his body cannot go on without water at some point. He doesn't think Silva would poison him, after all of this. 

Then Silva goes, and they hoist him again. This time, James does not resist, and they do not stripe his back again. 

Silva asks for nothing - no information, no personal allowances. James answers his idle talk and concerned queries with silence, and learns slowly that when Silva appears he stops being in pain, but for no discernable reason. He does not shame Bond for comfort, does not force him to answer questions for basic amenities, but Silva does not allow James to have it outside of his presence.

James becomes a Pavlov's dog, hates himself when he feels instantly relieved at the sight of Silva, so accustomed to the perfect, regular visits - Silva appears every four hours during the day, with eight uninterrupted hours at night. James knows that it is designed that way, that he can keep time by levels of agony and then relief. 

He has already surrendered discomfort at the constant invasion of his personal space, in favor of accepting Silva's intimate, familiar touches - though they are pointedly only barely inappropriate. Silva touches James where he is injured, gently - his wrists, his back, his shoulders - and only there. Bond accepts them because they meant imminent relief, release, a chance to stand on his own and ease his weight from his shoulders. James has grown filthy in the interim, and finally the team of captors had stripped him bare of his clothes. They see fit to occasionally hose him in icy water, and these things James endures all the while turning inward - hating himself for surviving because he knows that there will be an end when Silva appears again.

For two weeks, he stubbornly refuses to say anything in the man's presence, when somewhere around the pain the idea finally dawns that perhaps he should try to turn the tables, to manipulate his captor. This - as it was - could go on indefinitely, a stalemate, but if he makes a move there is the possibility that James could gain the upper hand - but by silence he was gaining nothing. Not even an indicator of what Silva wanted. 

As the decision reaches him, Silva fails to appear at his regular time - 

and for two days thereafter, no one comes at all. 

James hangs in slowly increasing anxiety, pain the least of his tortures now.

His hands have gone cold and purple, insensate, and his weak shoulder threatened to slip free of the socket when he drew breath deeply. His Tennyson has betrayed him,

_When that which drew from_  
out the boundless deep  
Turns again home

Flees his mind when he tries to call it up, in favor of one his mother had once recited, one that he had learned in school before the notions of MI6 had taken him, before he'd considered what to do with his life at all aside from learn his forms and wear his uniform and sit up straight in class like a good little Scotsman, and

_break, break, break  
On thy cold gray stones, o sea! _

fills his thoughts, encouraging him subtly, and he grinds his teeth but all he can think is the beat of Break, Break, Break in time with his heart until the meter of it is inseparable from the pulse of his own blood. 

_And I would that my tongue could utter  
the thoughts that arise in me_

He has become accustomed to sleeplessness, to the visions jumping up at the corners of his eyes, but this is the longest he has gone utterly sleepless, and when the light finally comes on it baffles his eyes and his mind and he thinks only: _break BREAK break_ , and refuses to listen to the sensations coming from his extremities until they have stopped moving of his own accord and he regains himself.

"There you are, Mr. Bond," Silva is saying, and James realizes his voice has been present for some time, and his body is warm, blissful, floating - as if on air, but instead it is water. He shifts and it sloshes, his hand comes in contact with the cold porcelain edge of the tub and that grounds him, returns his thoughts to his own, and he groans wordlessly.

Silva presses a cold cup into James' grateful fingers, and James drinks the water, and tries to recount the sequence of events in his own mind, but he cannot. There is only the warm water, darkening from exposure to his skin, and Silva's gentle touch on James' scalp, scratching well manicured nails through his hair, working some kind of soap into it.

"I know I left you alone for a long time," Silva continues, his tone soft, soothing, and James feels instantly safer, instantly soothed and he wants to bite his cheek, his tongue, wants to claw his way free of the water and wrap his hands around his captor's neck, but it simply isn't in him. "But I had some arrangements to make, and since you made them work so hard for their pay once, they are leery of you, James."

James' breath evens, the soft soothing touches against his scalp ease him in a way he cannot explain, and his mind takes up the cadence of _break, break, break_ again but only because it is tired, there is nothing else to think, and it feels softer this time.

"I want to know if she'd come for _you_ ," Silva is saying, and James is tired of his voice, just wants his fingers to continue, wants to sleep here, eased and in the bath - warm for the first time in a while and not thirsty.

"What's your first name?" James asks at last, makes himself growl over the pulse of his thoughts, as if he could deny the rest of his reaction. 

"Raoul," Silva answers, surprised - perhaps to hear James' voice.

"Shut your damn mouth, Raoul."  
-

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Two of Alfred Tennyson's Poems referenced in this chapter: Crossing the Bar, and Break, Break, Break.


	3. Chapter 3

When next they visit, James has regained himself enough to reclaim his resolve - and he allows Silva more liberties. James is careful to use his first name, careful to lean forward toward him, to be attentive to his words. That the act comes easier than he likes is not comforting, but James does not allow himself to stop - if he can win some leniency, he can - well, he's not sure what, but he needs an advantage.

Silva has not yet been very revealing with him, either sensing James' ploy or testing his dedication to it. He has not overtly rejected James' slow edging, his not-quite-overt flirtations, but James knows when he has overstepped.

When Silva lets him down, James drops straight to his knees and steadies himself with his hands against the fronts of Silva's thighs - and it garners him only a disappointed expression at his heavy-handed and feeble attempt.

James realizes that he will have to _mean_ it. That is not outside his capabilities, but it sets his teeth together just a little more firmly. Silva steps back, and lets James find his feet on his own, sliding his hands casually into his pockets and turning his back - and that makes James wish for the energy in his shaking limbs to lunge, for enough strength in his fingers to crush the man's neck, but he holds himself - it isn't yet the time.

"I've made my bid," Silva begins, his tone pleasant.

"Your bid for - world domination?" James prompts, careful to keep his thoughts from wandering, and when Silva turns he looks calculating and impatient. James fears - briefly - that he will leave and the others will come to hang him again.

Raoul laughs then, re-engaged perhaps by the faint spark of terror in James' eyes. James is careful to keep his attention on Silva - it is his best, perhaps his only tool.

"No," Silva says, and he settles himself - Bond's cell has three features, aside from the chain - a bed that is narrow and old; a rescue from elsewhere on the island, a straight backed wooden chair which Silva usually occupies when he is in the cell, and a toilet.

Bond has lived in less luxurious settings.

"I told her that if she gave me you, that I would not publish the rest of her precious list," Silva answers, and James is struck dumb by it What could the motive be - there is a past here he does not know, and so it becomes a puzzle. 

"Why?" James asks, because he knows Silva wants him to. He wouldn't have mentioned it except to entice James to ask. "What worth do I have to _you_? You know I won't-"

"Oh very little worth," Silva laughs, as James stops himself. The sentence has provoked a dangerous look in his captor's eyes. For a moment, James has almost been drawn into the spell, believed they were on equal footing instead of ever tipped out of Bond's favor.

"No, James. I want to know if she will do it," Raoul says fiercely, and then, "How many lives do you think _yours_ is worth, Mr. Bond? If you had to put an exact figure to it, what would you guess?"

Bond does not guess. It's hardly a game, he realizes, and they are treading deeper water than he cares to without knowing the full story.

"Wiser not to speculate," Silva agrees, after a long moment of silence, and he stands. Bond feels a ferocious stab of anxiety and worry overtaking him - he knows that as soon as Silva disappears through the door, the others will come back. God help him, he's not sure how many more times he can face that. 

"Did she agree?" Bond hisses out, his voice painfully desperate, his tone too real, to revealing, and Silva turns with his warm shark's smile. James has given _something_ up in that instant. The smile warns and beckons in the same instant, inviting Bond to ask what he really means instead; leniency.

But the silence stretches between them, instead, before Silva turns away, suddenly bored, tired of this game. "We will find out, Mr. Bond, won't we?"

-  
On his visits, Silva brings James fresh, clean clothes - it's a strange sort of luxury.

He'd never so appreciated a simple oxford shirt and slacks - though he gets nothing else. Perhaps so the others have one less layer to strip off when they invariably return. 

James discovers - without having to be told, that he is allowed the most continuous sleep with his head pillowed in Raoul's lap, as easy as that - strong fingers soothing the muscles in James' neck, and he lacks even the reserves of energy to fight _that_. It is enough to be on steady ground, supine, his body simply surrenders to sleep and Silva allows it until James wakes of his own accord.

It is one of these times when, as Silva shifts to get up at last, and James faces another - indeterminate - period of suspension, he is overcome by panic and aversion. He finally asks - though it turns his insides around painfully, chokes up in his throat-

"Can you make it stop?"

He tells himself immediately that he will give Silva _nothing_ , admonishes himself for the weakness, but Silva smiles - charmingly, genuinely.

"Of course I will, James," and he cups his hand through Bond's hair, over the back of his skull affectionately, and doesn't ask for anything.

James wonders how long he suffered for pride alone.

He feels a dirty rush of relief, as filthy and purged as if he had soiled himself. Perhaps the promise is even empty, and James will find himself hanging up again the instant Raoul loses interest or patience, but it's the first excuse for hope James has had in weeks.

Raoul is watching him as if he were the most interesting thing,eyes locked on Bond's to register every change, as if he could look right through the man, and maybe he could. Perhaps all of this was just so that Bond could open his mind and see-

James makes his move before his thoughts fly any further down that dangerous, off-kilter path. He curls his fingers into the loud collar of Raoul's obnoxiously designer shirt and half pulls himself up, half yanks his captor down for a kiss. He has the excuse of gratitude for making his move, but what he finds is a hungry mouth that surprises him.  
What wakes in him, what _responds_ in James startles him, coiling up sharply from his belly as he pushes his tongue against the smooth, strange roof of Silva's mouth, into a hot dryness that surprises him. It's foreign, unusual. Plastic, James realizes, and he reaches up in curiosity before he can stop himself. 

For half a second, as they both draw back and Silva's eyes are feral with lust, with an animal ferocity, James puts a hand on his cheek and feels the crack in Silva's slipping facade. Raoul seizes Bond's hand, his collar, and holds him away from further exploration, a sudden furious light waking in him.

"This is not your sin, Mr. Bond."

James had felt the unnatural edge along his cheekbone, the crack as if in disconnect from reality. He draws a deep breath and drops his voice low in his chest to suggest, "Maybe you should call me James," while he disengages his hands from Silva's hold and starts to pull him down to take his mouth again.

Raoul draws his head back slowly, stays out of reach with a coldness in his eyes - it is not a warning or a wariness, but an expression. His mouth has become his weapon; he does not _kiss_ , but he will _bite_.

And that, Bond finds, is perfectly alright with him. He lets his mind wander on the subject while they seize at each other's buttons, wrestling them undone. He has never enjoyed the false intimacy of kissing - he is his own weapon, his body has become a tool many times. A kiss was more of him than his body, more than he cared to give away simply to get what he wanted.

Silva does not ask for _that_ either, and James relaxes into it at that discovery, even as Raoul's dangerous mouth fastens on his neck and he clamps his teeth hard on corded muscle. Strong hands slide down Bond's thighs, and this time he arches into it, _this_ time he thinks where it can get him if he goes along.

And then a warm hand closes possessively over James' groin and finds him hard already, finds it genuine enough to satisfy Silva's taste, and he curls his fingers over cloth and skin to rub with his palm, firm and insistent. James slides his hands over Silva's sides, under his open shirt and jacket, and then grips helplessly, desperately, at Raoul's scarred back.

The ridges tell much under James' fingertips, and he has much more of the puzzle from these five minutes of intimacy - he had suspected the scars from the long sleeves, from the collar always buttoned just so, from the slim fitting suits that stayed close to his body and never hung free enough to allow a further glimpse of skin. At the second, it hardly matters, not with what's happening - James is too focused on remembering his part: to be eager, but not so much so that he utterly forgets himself.

James shifts up, and there is barely enough space on the narrow, groaning bed for the two of them together, but they push and twist, and Silva uses the motion to undo the fly of James' slacks, to claw them halfway down his hips, and then between the firm grip of his fingers and the teeth that close suddenly on Bond's earlobe, James grunts and pulls in a sharp breath.  
Because it's _good_ , it's distracting and it seems, on the surface, to be all about James. He's never had sex with another 00 before - even a past one. They did not seem so stingy with the licenses to fuck at MI6, anyway, but James tends to stay out of the company pool - this is hard to mistake, when the fingers curled around Bond's dick seem to know him as well as James knows himself. It's not gentle or wondering, it's confident and assertive, and it wakes Bond's instinct to let it happen, let it _happen_ and it will all be alright-

Then he's clawing his own slacks the rest of the way off desperately, slinging himself upright and over Silva's lap in the process and then grasping for the man's belt, while Silva marks him with his mouth and hands, biting his collar bone, his bicep, leaving a perfect set of purpled teeth marks around one of Bond's nipples, all the while stroking him possessively.

Finding his stamina failing him embarrassingly fast, James thinks of cricket, of M scowling at him. He thinks of home, country, duty - and it shames him enough so that he can gather himself and insinuate fingers into Silva's pockets - seeking-

"So desperate, James?" Raoul purrs as James rocks into his fist and tries to find the damn lube - perhaps it is more than he should expect for there to _be_ any.

"I don't mean for you to deny yourself," James answers, _suggests_ in kind, as his fingers brush across a smooth surface, close and find a cord protruding, and then discard - it isn't what he's looking for. The chuckle that responds makes James gasp and pull his cheek between his teeth.

"I would get what I wanted, James," he says, and looks up, curls his fingers into a squeeze just shy of pain, just pushing that edge. "I _take_ what I want."

"Sévérine mentioned as much," Bond answers in a dry undertone, but he never stops moving.

"In the inner pocket, James." Raoul corrects. "Because you are so eager I suppose you deserve it." 

There is some faint echo under the implied threat of outright barbaric sodomy that suggests perhaps Silva had never intended it. Humiliation, perhaps, but he had his lines, and he did not need to cross them to achieve his results.

James finds the bottle in the shirt pocket, over Silva's heart, and he feels like finally some pieces are falling together in his mind, but that's for _later_.

His shoulders scream with old stiffness and sore protest when James reaches behind himself, after wrestling the fly of Silva's pants open - and his attempts to gain anything further are swatted away, deflected - and works himself open. It doesn't take much. This may not be common for James, but he isn't the sort to forget the trick of something, once he's mastered it. 

James only just barely gets his slickened fingers on Silva's cock, the heft of it eager and threatening in James' hands when he is unsettled and control is utterly stripped from him at last.

Raoul pushes him down into the old mattress face first and curls a hand around James' neck, the other first sliding against his balls and there is a scolding sound against James' ear for the imperfections Silva finds there, an old signature of someone else.

And then he guides himself in, a rough persistent slide that opens James relentlessly and yet the pain of it is muted, it doesn't feel like quite enough, and James bites his cheek again to help, pushing back, arching his hips. 

"Shh," Silva says, right against his ear and the sensation sends Bond into a violent, shivering jerk that wrenches a noise from both of them. "Be still - catch your breath."

James growls because he knows how to do this already, because by now it should be obvious that he wasn't bluffing about it, and still when he feels the man drawing in a deep demonstrative breath against his back and the motion translates through where they've joined he follows it, where it seems to flow continuously one to the other. 

He is just bout to suggest - pointedly - that they get on with it when Silva draws out slightly and a smaller, harder thing begins to press into James alongside. It is slick but _cold_ , unyielding, and James gasps and reaches forward to grab handfuls of thin blanket and mattress and _holds on_ until it is in place where Silva apparently wants it inside of him.

"Are you ready for this?" Silva asks in breathless, dangerously playful taunt, and James has just begun to register the implications of shape when it turns on, springs to life inside of him suddenly with a powerful, fluttering intensity that wrecks all the rhythms of him. The vibrations blank his thoughts and scatter his breaths to gasps and almost helpless moans that he closes his teeth against when Raoul begins moving in him, against _it_ , pushing it harder into him until he feels it all the way to his _teeth_.

He cannot count how many thrusts it takes for orgasm to shatter him apart - buzzing right up to the edge of pain and sweat and grit teeth before it surprises him and he's cumming in thick streams against his own stomach, down his own thighs without even needing to be _touched_ , and it should shame him except it seems to be what Raoul wanted.

"So you still have some firsts after all, James," Silva says, but his voice is a shell, almost a wreck of itself, and he pulls something while James tries to catch his breath and the vibrator - a little metal egg - starts to slide free even as he continues to thrust and James cums dry, agonizing and wrenched and _too soon_ , helpless against it as Silva does.

Perhaps he has more 'firsts' than he thought, even, James considers to himself as he sags under his own eight and pulls in air like the world was running out of it. His thighs are slick with sweat and his own release, and his shoulders prickle with cooling moisture, and he feels the bed shift as Raoul settles back.

It's all the incentive he needs to surrender to gravity, and Silva stripes a sticky hand over his tailbone in a terrifyingly soft affection, no less possessive for it's lack of bruising force.

-

"They lost you," Bond guesses, in the paltry excuse for afterglow, while things grow awkward and delicate between them. He feels so wrung out that he is unable to even hate. "And you suffered for it."

There is the click of a lighter, a sudden radiant heat against James' back, and then Silva shifts off of him, resettles himself comfortably with his back against the wall as sweet smoke trails out into the room, and James turns onto his side to look back at him.

"No," he says, and James looks up, reaches in wordless request for a smoke, and Raoul gives the cigar to him. "She threw me to them. It was a game of sorts - it always has been. M looks at the table, and she sees the number of the chips, hn? But others, they see the sizes." 

Silva passes a hand over James' scarred shoulder, over the double wounds.

"So I suffered, yes, as you said - because I thought I was protecting her. Our 'pathetic love for country', James. It takes us _so_ far."

James smokes, and the tobacco is harsh, abrasive, but the taste is full and fine. After he coughs out his first lungfull, he is more careful to take the smoke into his mouth only.

"When I realized she had not only abandoned me but _put_ me there-"

Anger sparks up in James. Silva's tone is distant, gone. As if there is no longer any way for him to think rationally of this sequence in his life. His objectivity has suffered a fatal wound somewhere along the line.

"What do you want?" James snaps, irritably. He is sore and aching from his shoulders down, thinking - is _this_ it? What Silva wanted him to see? "A pat on the head? Knighthood? Wrong career choice."

Silva takes the cigar suddenly back from James, looking angered for a moment, as if he will apply it directly to Bond's bared skin. It would be a match for some of the scars James had felt along Silva's sides.

"Oh, he _bites_ ," he finally answers, smoothed over again and purring with only the faintest surprise, as if it amused him. His control lapses for less than an instant, but then he smokes and he has gone calm and still again inside. He shares nothing else with Bond.

When he goes at last, the cigar burned down to an inch long stub, James is left in peace - and he sleeps deeply with only half-formed dreams of losing his teeth.


	4. Chapter 4

After that, Bond is free to go where he will. There's no place to go - so many miles of ocean between them and anywhere else. Silva leaves Bond's door unlocked and James does not wander at first. He is being lured, he feels.

But freedom is like the incessant tug of a hook in his cheek, drawing him as surely as a fisherman pulls his prize at last from the depths, and Bond goes at last. He has not seen Silva in some days, has heard no news from the silent captors who brought his food, and agents are curious by nature. By necessity, he'd allow. If he is not supposed to leave his quarter, he supposes the boundary will be made clear to him soon enough. 

There is barely an inch indoors where the hum of computers does not penetrate. Bond wanders empty halls past rubble and sparsity lined with neatly laid cords, and touches only the occasional unwelcoming computer terminal - they ask passwords and carry no operating system he is familiar with. 

The building is a museum to life, but a home for technology, and James is too much of a relic to find place with anything but the crushed marble littering the halls. He briefly entertains the satisfying thought of smashing the machines, but he does not know if it will accomplish or trigger anything.

When he finds Silva's room, he knows it for what it is immediately. It's expansive, with a neatly made bed that Bond isn't sure has ever been slept in, and windows that splay tall patches of sunlight over the floor that can't quite grasp the far corners no matter how they reach.

There is a pool table that has been claimed to serve as a flat surface large enough to hold an array of laptops and tablets, some open and ready, some stacked and seemingly forgotten. Bond scoffs briefly at the nest of wires wrapped around the thick wooden legs, and moves deeper into the empty chamber.

He avails himself of the shower, lets it run hot and scouring , and the water is a relief against his sore and dirty skin. The soap smells strongly of something heavy and spiced, and Bond is averse to it - he doesn't want that part of Silva to settle so heavily onto his skin. In the end he gives in an scrubs himself clean. Pushes the bar against his short-cropped hair until there's a lather there, too, and when the soap runs off him it leaves the water brown tinged with old sweat and pain.

He has only dirty clothes to get back into when he emerges, so he doesn't. Modesty will gain him nothing at this point, but he finds a heavy cotton robe, expensive, plush, and white. He pulls it onto his shoulders where it settles like a warm, heavy animal.

The room is still empty when he lets the cloud of steam out into it and emerges. In a fit of mild annoyance, Bond clears the felt surface of the pool table off, setting laptops aside, tablets on the bedspread and sideboard, turning the central focus into a ring of discarded technology to reclaim their rest for its original intent.

He finds the billiard balls in the pockets, the rack tucked into a slot on the side of the table, and sets it up for a game. No cue sticks immediately make themselves apparent, and Bond experiences a moment of frustration because they could be anywhere. Left behind wherever the pool table had first come from, for all James knows. He sets it anyway, carefully arranges the billiard balls into the triangular rack and gives it a shake to roll the balls evenly inside it and loosen them up and set the point ball on the appropriate marker. James carefully pulls the rack up and returns it to its place. He leans over the table to set the cue ball on it's marker, and check the sight-line.

"Another game, James?" Silva's voice materializes before the rest of him, curling and soft, rich with good humor. There is something cheshire about his attitude that tells James that Silva is holding some new information in exchange for his absence. Something has pleased him, anyway, and he wants Bond to be aware of it.

"I thought we could try something less wasteful," James agrees, drolly, after a moment to smooth his nerves - they had warred with each other for anxiety and relief at the sound of Silva's voice; at his smooth, soothing presence.

Silva tips his head in acquiescent acknowledgment of James' halfhearted barb, and glides across the room. He stoops smoothly, but with his back held straight, and retrieves a long, dark case from under the bed. Cues, James realizes, the kind that come apart into halves.

"It's been a while since I have played," Silva admits. "There is no challenge in playing subordinates."

"I suppose there wouldn't be," Bond agrees. Silva's men were pawns, tossed aside carelessly when they couldn't please him.

In Silva's fingers the case unfolds, revealing neat rows of cue halves. He lets Bond pick first and James rolls his eyes and selects at random - matching parts together to produce something roughly the correct length. James supposes it's no more a handicap, not having a personal cue, than an antique pistol. 

"Who breaks?" Silva purrs in question, and for a moment in James' mind the voice supercedes his mothers chanting Tennyson - _break break break_.

"I will," James says, to cut his thoughts in half with decisive action, and he lets his tone _dare_ Silva to challenge him. Behind the amused animal brightness of Silva's dark blue eyes, the shadow of something fiercer wakes, but it does not touch his smile.

He has captured Silva's interest - and he feels it a little like victory. Like things are going Bond's way at last, and the longer he can keep Silva focused on him, the less time he will have for his plan, the lower Silva's guard - if Bond is very, very careful in his seduction. If he leaves enough truth in it.

He leans further over the table than he has to, in order to take aim, and he wishes he had the luxury of one of his tailored suits, to make the invitation clearer than he can in the heavy, cotton robe that hangs loose and muffles his figure.

Silva takes the hint anyway, and Bond has barely taken his shot - the billiard balls are still moving, still clicking as they impact each other, when Silva shoves him down hard against the felt surface before Bond can straighten up to observe where they come to rest. One of the rolling pool balls bruises him just under his collar bone before it traps itself painfully between his ribs and the table. 

"This isn't in the rules," James gasps, clawing beneath himself to displace the ball. Silva shoves harder down against him, leaning heavily down over his back, and all James can manage is to trap his arm beneath himself and it transfers the point of pressure off the unyielding acrylic ball at least.

"I don't believe we set terms, Mr. Bond," Silva says, and then he gets up, leans back and presses his palm flat in the center of James' back to warn him, "Don't get up." 

The narrow end of Silva's cue stick taps the insides of James' ankles precisely, in a clear instruction. James lets his hips rest on the raised lip of the pool table, thick and supportive, and widens his stance. Silva is standing back, admiring his options almost clinically.

"Do you know where I've been, James?" he asks, and the chalked end traces old dust against the vulnerable backs of Bond's knees, against the planes of his legs - the targets of his achilles tendons, the shivering inside of his thigh with an unerring reminder of his femoral arteries. 

"No," James swallows, and he knocks the pool ball out from under himself at last - the thirteen - and presses himself flatter to the felt, allowing the feelings of humanity and weakness to touch the back of his mind.

"I've been speaking to our Mother," Silva generously shares ownership of his obsession, and James is grateful that he heavy terry-cloth likely masks the sudden averse tightening of his shoulders.

"About?"

The cue catches under the hem of the robe by Bond's ankles, and Silva lifts it up, slowly, pushing it up into a pile in the middle of James' back to bare him with deliberate care.

It makes James feel almost filthy again, despite the recent shower. Silva leaves him until he is sure Bond is aware of his eyes on James' body.

"You," he says blandly, as if the answer should have been obvious. As if Bond's failure to squirm was an undecided factor in his mind. "The offer I left her."

Bond lifts himself on his forearms to look over his shoulder at Silva, wondering if he is ever going to get on with this. Silva is working the thick end of the cue stick in his fist, the other hand holding it low on the shaft where the striping ends. 

The way it slips suggestively through his fingers, the slick shine and clear dripping liquid give James clue enough to what Silva is doing. He swallows and braces his arms more firmly under his chest. Bond wonders if he hadn't known what was coming, it would be better. 

"She agreed to my bargain," Silva's voice grows nearer as he speaks and then he presses one hand, cool and slick between Bond's shoulders and leans down against him. "But I think she's looking for you, James."

For a moment, Silva straightens again, and sudden, cold liquid slides in excess against his tailbone, down his thighs and up the concavity of his spine before Silva swipes his broad palm through it to get it on his fingers and where he needs it. The feel of it going cold over James' balls is enough to start to stir his blood, the feel of Silva's fingers seeking, pressing for entrance makes him want it, as an aggressive response to the alternative. Silva barely works his fingers in, barely starts to stretch Bond wide before he withdraws.

James pulls in a deep breath, and when the blunt, rounded end of the cue stick presses against him, when Silva's fingers pull and press and help it breech, he widens his feet further and lets the table take his weight so he can focus.

"How much can you take?" Silva asks, when the hardest part is over - it is thickest at the end, and it's in James already, though his body is clenching and when it doesn't yield or retreat it hurts some. An echo of panic wakes in the edge of his mind where he still entertains instincts, but more-so it is a _challenge_ to be overcome.

"All of it," James growls, letting his words out with his breath as Silva presses it further into him, and the slide is slick and smooth at least, even if it's still difficult to remember how to accept like this.

But it keeps pushing - further than James thought possible. It's probably not nearly as much as it feels like - yards and yards with a slow, irresistible driving pressure. 

It's not remotely sexual, but about power, endurance. It's about his body bearing down on the unnatural, unforgiving stiffness of the cue until James feels it bottom out and he _knows _it can't go any further.__

__"More," James groans, flattening himself to the table, pushing his arms out in front of him to lengthen himself. Full, stretched, sore - but there's no pain, no outright _agony_ , and therefore the picture is incomplete somehow._ _

__"You want me to hurt you?" Silva asks, leaning down to breathe softly at Bond's ear._ _

__" _Yes,_ " James hisses, trying to arch his back, to push further. But Silva _doesn't_._ _

__"This whole story, James. This tired old cliche - " Silva is twisting, withdrawing just a little, and then he pushes it in again, to the limit with gentle precision._ _

__"Can't you see this repeating theme? The good of the many, the good of the one... How many are worth 'many', like you or I? Where is the measure, the scale?"_ _

__Silva draws it back further still, until it is almost comfortable, though it is still _so much_._ _

__"She is looking for you, but she won't find you. Not here. Only you could find this place, and... here you are."_ _

__Another inch back, two,a nd then Silva adjusts his grip to keep measure of how far, how deep the cue is right there, and begins to thrust it slowly. It seems to come out forever, to go in impossibly long, to reach so deep into James that his words are driven out._ _

__He forgets, almost, how to breathe until he realizes Silva is guiding him with the long rhythm of the strokes, and he fills his lungs as it retreats, empties them as Silva pushes it back in, in those forever strokes that stretch the moments out into eons of opposing motions, and Bond wonders almost philosophically, if this is how it feels when the earth changes._ _

__"Very good, James, "Silva soothes, against his ear, and the sound almost makes no sense to Bond's mind with his focus directed so pointedly elsewhere, but his body flushes hot before he realizes it, and his cock feels heavy against the felt, but not hard. Not yet. There's still too much, and he bites his lip when he realizes the warmth from Silva's words likely shows on his skin as a blush. " _Very_ good."_ _

__The smooth plastic teeth close on the shell of his ear, the warm wet tongue pushes in further with the sound of skin on skin as it blocks the canal briefly, and James startles, shifts. He finds his body unable to bend freely for the inflexible length pushed deep into him, and he gasps in a breath._ _

__Silva shushes him gently and pushes him down even as James is flattening himself, going loose again on instinct, and then Silva straightens up. The motion to withdraw the cue is faster than the ones Silva has been using, rushed. It still seems to go on forever, drawing all of James with it, pulling his being out from the inside until it's gone and the very absence of it leaves his stomach muscles tensing, his lower back aching. He becomes aware of the felt scratching against his forearms and a vast emptiness as his muscles seize together on the absence, contracting. He feels stretched in a way he never has, through all of it had been astoundingly slow and gentle, it leaves him sore without the distraction taking up all of his focus._ _

__His cock is hard when he's aware enough again to notice. Silva's fingers are pushing gently behind his balls, then absent, then they find the void of space created by the arch of James' body over the side of the table and he insinuates a hand in under James' side to push James' dick between his slick palm and the felt of the table. He applies a suggestive pressure, with the barest first hints of a rhythm until James ducks his head between his own curled hands and lets go of pride, getting purchase with his braced toes and he fucks into the pressure of Silva's fingers. Bond ruts himself against the roughness of the table hard and relentless, because he can feel Silva mirroring _his_ breaths for once as James does it._ _

__It's just at the point where the friction threatens to leave a burn on his skin, where the pain threatens to overwhelm his ability to find release that James comes, still fucking the space between Silva's palm and the table, as if it were the only one made for him in the world._ _

__The force of it overruns him, but his skin his so sensitive he feels the felt surface saturate with his own release, and grow sticky against his softening dick and his belly._ _

__"There you are," Silva says, as if making a point in conversation, and he helps James find up and down again, to coax his knees back into working properly after so long locked straight under strain._ _

__James stands straight, stretching himself out, and his eyes catch the on the pool cue discarded on the floor like a conquered opponent, and Bond takes in a breath, asks, "How much?"_ _

__He doesn't know why he wants to know - needs to, at least for the moment he asks, but the urge fades._ _

__Silva chuckles and wraps strong arms around Bond's middle, his hands dropping absently to take a handful of James' robe and carefully dab his sensitive skin clean with gentle touches._ _

__"Enough, James," is how Silva answers, his voice light and airy with a sort of pride. "Enough."_ _

**Author's Note:**

> The title from Sia's 'She Wolf', specifically the David Guetta mix which I have been listening to nonstop.


End file.
